Back to the 1950s

Over the weekend the government minister Margaret Hodge has said that British families should be given priority for council housing, over the claims of economic migrants. Her comments have been supported by that arch-panderer Hazel Blears.

Essentially what Mrs Hodge is advocating is a re-introduction of discrimination in the provision of council housing, taking us back to the dark days of the 1950s when the first large scale immigration from the West Indies, Pakistan and India began. In the days after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, when West Indian residents were sought out and attacked by white men who had come into the area specifically to target the immigrants, the local Labour MP George Rogers complained ‘that white people in the area felt that they had been subjected to long provocation by coloured people living disreputable lives in appalling conditions’.* In fact, it was the immigrants that were subject to over-charging in housing and were forced to live in over-crowded conditions with several families living in just one house.

This is the situation we are again seeing in Britain. You just have to visit places like Slough, where Polish and other Eastern European immigrants are being forced into the same cramped and over-crowded conditions that were experienced by the immigrants in the 1950s.

No one can deny that the situation isn’t serious and needs urgent government attention. However, all Mrs Hodge is doing is pandering to far-right elements in her own constituency. It was her blunder that legitimised the BNP candidates standing in her constituency in 2006, which led to them winning enough seats to make them the second largest party on the council. And now, instead of standing up to these people she is pandering to those who preach hatred and advocate discrimination.

Only one criterion should be used for providing council housing – need. In the meantime, the government should pull its finger out and build more council houses, perhaps a new chancellor could do something to stop the explosion in house prices that has forced so many people out of the market (so they can get out of rented accommodation), and perhaps, just perhaps, Mrs Hodge (an immigrant herself) can try and take on the racists in her constituency instead of pandering to them.

*Quoted from The National Archives, PREM 11/2920, minute of meeting between David Renton and George Rogers, 4 September 1958.

Six vying for deputy spot.

Six candidates have managed to muster the 45 nominations needed to run for the deputy leadership of the Labour party. Harriet Harman, Hazel Blears, Hilary Benn, Alan Johnson, Peter Hain and John Cruddas have all been nominated.

Apart from Cruddas, there really isn’t much between the candidates. He seems to be the only one saying anything interesting – and he has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be in the Cabinet should he be elected. As a former special adviser Cruddas certainly isn’t a trouble-maker and, if elected, would give Gordon Brown much greater freedom in choosing his Cabinet while freeing him from some of his party responsibilities.

There really isn’t much between the other candidates. Harriet Harman’s sole pitch is that she is a woman, and a woman should get the job. She seems to forget she was a lousy Cabinet minister, sacked from the Department of Social Security in 1998 and has been rattling around junior minister positions since she was restored to office in 2001. She is also completely accident prone. The Labour MP Austen Mitchell brilliant summed up her obsession for political correctness when he called her Harriet Harperson.

Of the remaining candidates, Hazel Blears is the most irritating person in the government, is too close to John Reid for my liking and is a member of the Labour party’s tap dancing squad. Peter Hain has gone from radical freedom campaigner to sycophantic Blairite – plus he is orange. Alan Johnson made is reputation from doing Blair’s dirty work, whereas Hilary Benn is an amiable bloke with a famous father who has done alright as International Development Secretary.

If I was a Labour member I think that I would plump for either Cruddas or Benn. But I’m nowhere close to being a Labour supporter – so I would love either Harman or Blears to get the job.

Come in Mr Blair, your time’s up.

As Gordon Brown has secured the Labour party leadership he is guaranteed to be our next Prime Minister. This is no great surprise. For thirteen years we have expected Mr Brown to succeed Tony Blair, despite the Prime Minister’s constant attempts to try and block Brown’s succession.

The question now is why do we have to wait for six weeks before Mr Brown becomes PM? For a couple of years now, and especially since the Labour party conference last year, we have had to put up with a lame duck Prime Minister. The government is drifting along aimlessly just to satisfy one man’s vanity. Mr Blair got his wish of passing his tenth anniversary in office (and two days later the voters gave him a good kicking in the polls). But still he is hanging on. Today he is in Washington for a last meeting with President Bush, and then there will be an EU meeting and a G8 summit. These are important meetings, at which this country should be represented not by a lame duck, but rather by the man who will be leading us for the next couple of years.

Go away now Mr Blair, your time is up.

Sweet n' Sour Conspiracy

It seems that Labour MSPs are already conspiring to replace Jack McConnell as leader of the Scottish Labour party. An entertaining article in today’s Herald has reported that a group of women Labour MSPs gathered at the weekend and, over a Chinese takeaway, discussed how to oust Mr McConnell.

Despite their protestations of loyalty, several of the group apparently aspire to Mr McConnell’s job. Wendy Alexander is perhaps the best known of the group, which also includes Margaret Curran, Johann Lamont, Sarah Boyack and Karen Gillon.

However, by far the most entertaining suggestion is that John Reid, soon to be ex-Home Secretary, should be the next leader of Scottish Labour. One of Labour’s recently elected constituency MSPs, it is suggested, should resign their seat and force a by-election that would allow Reid to enter the Scottish Parliament. The suggestion comes from Labour MP Brian Donohoe, who seems to have forgotten the old dictum that the best way to lose an election is to have one.

Mr Donohoe must be delusional if he thinks that John ‘attack-dog’ Reid would be some kind of electoral asset, or that Labour MSPs would welcome him with open arms. But maybe Donohoe just wants to get Reid out of Westminster and thinks that dumping him in the Scottish Parliament is one way to achieve that. Although, I bet Alex Salmond would love the idea.

Brown has it in the bag?

My knowledge of, and interest in, Labour politics is pretty limited. As a result I have to struggle to interest myself in the Labour party’s leadership or deputy leadership elections. The problem is that this contest is going to decide who our next Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are.

In the Gordon Brown versus John McDonnell contest you would have to suspect that Brown has it in the bag. McDonnell is a supporter of a number of left-wing causes, such as widespread nationalisation. On top of that he has troublemaking ‘previous’ as he was deputy to Ken Livingstone when the latter was leader of the Greater London Council in the 1980s. For the Labour party to choose him would be like the Tory party electing Iain Duncan Smith as leader……

Perhaps McDonnell will force Brown to move to the left slightly. Perhaps with John Reid leaving the government Brown will take the opportunity to scrap some of the illiberal measures that have come out of the Home Office of late. Maybe ID cards will be scrapped (with pressure on public spending, surely they would make a sensible cut?), although it says something about how much the Labour party has changed when opposition to ID cards is seen as left wing. But it would be a pure indulgence (and an act of madness) by Labour party activists if they were to elect McDonnell as leader.

Brown is hardly likely to shift the party or the government dramatically. There will probably be a change in emphasis and certainly of style. Yet, no one other than Brown has the chance to deliver the Labour party a fourth election victory. Such a victory will be much more difficult due to the resurgent Conservative party and with signs that Liberal Democrat’s are starting to loose ground – but this was always going to be the case.